The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime is first of all the detailed reading of David Lynch's The Lost Highway, based on the premises of Lacanian psychoanalysis. Lynch's unique universe of the "ridiculous sublime" is interpreted as a simultaneous playful staging and traversing of the fundamental ideological fantasies that sustain our late capitalist society. A master of reversals, Zizek invites the reader to reexamine with him easy assumptions, received opinion, and current critical trends, as well as pose tough questions about the ways in which we understand our world and culture. He offers provocative readings of Casablanca, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful in the process of examining topics as diverse-and as closely linked-as ethics, politics, and cyberspace.

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About the Author:

Slavoj Zizek, a senior researcher at the Institute for Social Sciences of the University of Ljubljana, is the author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lacan (But Were Afraid to Ask Hitchock) and In Defense of Lost Causes, among many books. Marek Wieczorek is assistant professor of modern art history at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the author of The Touch of Light: Laser Paintings by Carel Balth.